Tyler Hamilton had been harboring a secret for some time. A secret that he says had been shared and discussed openly among elite cyclists. A secret that had weighed heavily on the mind and legacy of Marblehead’s Olympic-gold-medal-winning cyclist. In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, May 22, Ham...

By Amy Saltzman/marblehead@cnc.com

Wicked Local

By Amy Saltzman/marblehead@cnc.com

Posted May. 25, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 25, 2011 at 12:30 AM

By Amy Saltzman/marblehead@cnc.com

Posted May. 25, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 25, 2011 at 12:30 AM

Marblehead

» Social News

Tyler Hamilton had been harboring a secret for some time. A secret that he says had been shared and discussed openly among elite cyclists. A secret that had weighed heavily on the mind and legacy of Marblehead’s Olympic-gold-medal-winning cyclist.

In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, May 22, Hamilton revealed that he used performance-enhancing drugs and said that others on the U.S. Postal Service team, including its most famous member, Lance Armstrong, did as well. Hamilton claimed personal knowledge of Armstrong having used the substance erythropoietin (EPO) to prepare for at least three of his seven Tour de France wins — in 1999, 2000 and 2001. He also claimed that they both received a blood transfusion in the middle of one particularly tough race.

In the interview, Hamilton painted a picture of a sport fatally plagued by drug use and secrets, many of which he said were brushed under the rug by not only the cyclists and their teams of doctors, but the International Cycling Union.

The revelations in CBS News’ exclusive interviews with Hamilton and former teammate Frankie Andreu have the potential to completely transform the sport of cycling.

As one of Armstrong’s right-hand men during his most successful years, Hamilton is now feeling the heat of going public. Another one of Armstrong’s most important wingmen, George Hincapie, is rumored to have testified before a grand jury confirming Armstrong’s drug use, but when asked by “60 Minutes,” Hincapie refused to comment on the ongoing investigation.

Both men, along with several others cyclists, were subpoenaed as part of a federal investigation of the U.S. Postal teams as to whether members used EPO, a substance that boosts production of red blood cells for endurance; testosterone; or blood transfusions to improve their performance.

Hamilton testified that Armstrong and he used all three methods — finally going public with the secret he has carried for many years. He even returned the gold medal he earned at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

“I just told my family about this for the first time four days ago, about all this,” a teary-eyed Hamilton said in the interview. “It was brutal. I told them the whole story, starting from the first time I doped, up through the end.”

In one of the more candid moments of the interview, Hamilton describes the first time he was offered EPO.

“It was a pretty emotional moment,” recalled Hamilton. “Basically I was starting to see the dirty side of the sport. It was tough.”

But Hamilton said he felt too close to his goal to not follow through.

“What would you do?” he asked the interviewer. “You’re that close, you’ve worked so hard to get to that moment, really you could say my whole life to get to that point. … I felt like I owed it to myself to look the other way and keep going forward.”

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Family support

Through the whole ordeal, Hamilton’s family has supported him, especially his parents, Bill and Lorna, who still live in Marblehead. As a father, Bill Hamilton said he always wanted to believe what his son told him. And now, learning just in the last month that his son did in fact take performance-enhancing drugs, Bill said he feels proud that Tyler has found the courage to tell the truth despite the backlash he was sure to experience.

“We had always believed what he said and we were probably naïve because obviously after what he said in the ‘60 Minutes’ interview, you just don’t survive. You just can’t be on the team (unless you take these drugs),” Bill Hamilton said in an interview with the Reporter. “But now that we have accepted it and understand much better that it did go on and why he did what he had to do, we fully support him 100 percent and we’re very proud of the stand he took. He came before millions of people and that was not easy.”

Tyler Hamilton said performance-enhancing drugs are part of the very culture of cycling.

“I guarantee you every other team had at least two or three riders who were doing the same thing. I bet my life on it,” he said.

Former teammate Frankie Andreu confirmed Hamilton’s description.

“If you weren’t taking EPO, you weren’t going to win,” Andreu said. “I got tired of getting dropped and having guys that normally would never ride in front of me kicking my butt. It was really a matter of survival. … Training alone wasn’t doing it.”

Hamilton said that some of the team’s doctors supervised the doping, and learning how to dope undetected became part of a top cyclist’s training.

Riders like Hamilton and Armstrong on the U.S. team even had second phone lines exclusively for discussing doping, according to Hamilton. They’d use code words like “Poe,” named after Edgar Allen Poe, for EPO, Hamilton said.

Armstrong has denied the allegations, as has the International Cycling Union, an organization Hamilton claims covered up a positive drug test of Armstrong’s back in 2001 at the Tour de Suisse.

Sour grapes?

In 2009, Hamilton retired from cycling after testing positive for a banned steroid. Five years earlier, he tested positive for blood doping and was suspended for two years, not long after he won his Olympic gold medal.

The town of Marblehead removed the sign at the town’s entrance on Lafayette Street, proclaiming it as the “hometown of Olympic cyclist Taylor Hamilton,” and the once world-renowned athlete was shamed.

Some say that Hamilton has now dragged Armstrong’s legacy through the mud as sour grapes and in an attempt to publicize a book he is rumored to have written.

Page 3 of 4 - But Hamilton’s own admission and his allegation against Armstrong and the sport of cycling comes two years after the 2009 incident and only after Hamilton received a subpoena from the grand jury in Los Angeles requiring him to testify. He had reportedly refused to cooperate with the investigation, which led to the subpoena.

Even in the “60 Minutes” interview Hamilton was said to have been hesitant to talk.

Interviewer Scott Pelley said the interview with Hamilton was “like pulling teeth,” when he described the experience to the “60 Minutes Overtime” editor Ann Silvio, the footage of which can be seen on the CBS website.

“It was a painful interview for him and a little bit painful for me as well. When I asked him about doping, about Armstrong and the other teammates, he was reluctant to talk,” said Pelley. “He felt very badly about what he was doing to Armstrong. … Every time he told us that he witnessed Armstrong using the banned substance EPO, he always said something like, ‘But that’s what we all did,’ ‘ I did it with him,’ ‘I did it too.’”

Pelley said that Hamilton felt too much focus was put on Armstrong. The issue, Hamilton said, was the sport itself, which is the viewpoint that gave the interview so much credibility, said Pelley.

“I feel bad that it’s beating up, beating up, beating him up,” said Hamilton. “I’d rather beat up the sport. I’d rather beat me up first, then beat up the sport.”

“Armstrong took what we all took. There’s really no difference between Lance Armstrong and I’d say the majority of the peloton,” he added. “It was just being part of the culture of the sport. He was the leader of the team and he expected, for example, going into the ’99 Tour (de France), which was his first Tour that he won, we did everything possible to help Lance win. We had one objective, that’s it.”

Hamilton described his past relationship with Armstrong as a good one, filled with fun and mutual respect for each other’s strong work ethic. And although he said he is sure all of this will result in backlash from Armstrong’s camp, Hamilton said in the interview, “For Lance, I feel bad I had to go here and do this. But in the end, long term, the sport’s going to be better off for it.”

He continued, “I love the sport, I want to do what’s best for the sport. I want to be involved with the sport for the rest of my life. For the short-term future, maybe cycling will go through some turbulence. But I guarantee in long term people will come back and thank me for doing this.”

Cycling wasn’t always like this, Hamilton said. Back in 1995 when he first started riding, performance-enhancing drugs were nowhere to be seen, and the rider did really well, naturally, without anything — “riding on bread and water.”

Page 4 of 4 - “For Tyler, this must be a huge weight off his shoulders, and I’m happy for him in that way,” said Marblehead Cycle owner Chris Finn, who knew Hamilton as a younger man hanging around the shop. “I still love the sport — always will, always have. No hard feelings on anybody. I just hope it makes it a more honest sport. I don’t know if it will, but of course I hope that.”